Note: So, yeah. Classes. And Major-Doubt. That's really al I have to say for the fact that I haven't updated in a week. But like I said before, we're basically on a "I write when I feel I can spare the time/am not utterly burned out from schoolwork" schedule. Forcing myself to put something out on a truly exacting basis kinda… drains a bit of the fun of writing. Like I need to come up with stuff to fill a chapter that I need to write even if I'm not sure said chapter is vaguely ready in my head enough to try and write it.

But enough about my thoughts and problems. Those aren't what you all come here for.

Oh, voice actor note: We'll be meeting Fabius (the Covenant's other scientist who Galmorn does not care for whatsoever) and he'd be voiced by Mark Oliver.

I do not own Frozen. Please review, comment, or criticize. Most of all, enjoy.

In the Old World

Chapter 14

Anna slumped further down against the wall and prepared to try again. She'd been sitting in the small cell for over a day. Since the near-minute her new captors had arrived, they'd slapped cuffs on her and lead her to a cell. She'd spent most of the time since trying to force her way out.

She looked down at the obviously magical cuffs clapped over her wrists. Glowing lines ran all through the metal, and the center of each seemed to have something very warm in it. At least, that was what it felt like every time she tried to use her magic. The energy would start pooling in her hands, and she'd even got it to leave her fingers a few times, but the cuffs around her wrists sucked the power into themselves. And then they got hot.

She held her hands out in front of her, and focused, feeling a strange tingling build in her. It shifted down her arms, then further to her palms. She could see misty green energy curling off her fingers. She splayed her fingers out and tried to project the magic. It got maybe an inch away before the metal lit up and sucked the energy in, the lines changing from white to green and slowly going back again.

"When are you going to accept that that won't work?"

Anna threw an angry glare at the speaker, standing on the other side of the door. He was the only member of the Covenant she'd seen who didn't wear a mask. A somewhat wrinkled face set between long white hair. He always looked… curious. But in a very unsettling way. She'd heard the others call him Fabius.

"Probably…" Anna pretended to mull his question over. "Never." Fabius laughed.

"It's your kind of person that I most enjoy. The ones that don't break under re-education. The ones with fire and strength. Believe it or not, your kind is the most useful. It's simply a matter of finding the proper motivation."

Elsa carefully stepped out of the rowboat and sloshed through the surf as quietly as she could. She'd advised Marius that perhaps a more careful approach would serve them better this time. Marius had agreed, and put a plan together with Vitalion and Tarkus. Small detachments of Lion Knights, along with Elsa and anyone who would come with her, would sneak up to the coast in smaller boats and get to the Covenant's outpost on foot. From there, they would try and enter as carefully as they could, and keep the rest of the Knights on standby in the nearby forest ready to lay siege if things didn't go according to plan.

But they would, Elsa told herself. They had to.

She felt a hand on her shoulder and turned her head to see Kristoff looking at her with a slightly concerned, yet encouraging expression. He'd only just recently recovered from the wound he'd received when the Covenant took Anna, but he had made it clear that he wasn't about to wait on the ships while everyone else went to try and rescue her again. Elsa, and everyone else, had agreed.

They started to make their way into the forest, when a gasp of pain caught Elsa's attention. She quickly turned to Kristoff, assuming his wound was still acting up. But he looked fine. She then shifted to look at Hans, who was leaned up against a tree, holding a hand to his head.

"Having problems, Prince Charming?" Kristoff called somewhat uncaringly. The ice harvester was nowhere near close to trusting Hans, and Elsa, despite her slowly growing wonders, was of a similar opinion.

"Just a little headache. It's nothing." Hans replied, steadying himself and moving into the trees.

Anna twisted her face into a grimace of incredible concentration, trying as hard as she could to project magic past the cuffs, and failing yet again. She was so absorbed in trying to even make anything happen she didn't hear the footsteps outside her cell door. When the keys clicked and the door was roughly shoved open, she jumped in her seat, startled.

Fabius was standing in the doorway, a devious-looking smile on his face. That immediately set Anna on her guard. Anything that would make that man smile couldn't mean anything good for her.

"It seems," Fabius began, "That your family and what is left of the Lion Knights have been following you." His smile widened as Anna felt hope well up within her. "Unfortunately for you and them, I cannot allow them to take you. However, I had an… idea as to how that might come about."

"And you're telling me because…?" Anna simply let the question hang.

"Because you will do it, princess."

Fabius and two Acolytes lead Anna into a large, circular room. In the very center was a pedestal. Something large and round sat there, covered by cloth.

"Why on Earth would I do anything to my sister? To the people who are here to help me?" Anna demanded.

"Remember what I said earlier, princess? About proper motivation?" Fabius walked to the pedestal and drew the cloth off the pedestal, revealing a large glass ball that swirled with dark mist. "Here is where you learn the exact meaning." Fabius turned back to her. "I will remove your shackles, and you will use your powers to drive the Knights away while our transport is prepared."

"What makes you think I'll do anything you want me to?" Anna asked defiantly.

Fabius smiled. It was a very unsettling smile. Like he was about to do something that would hurt her immeasurably, and he knew and liked it.

"Because, princess, we have had an agent in your sister's presence for some time now. And if you refuse any command we might give you from here on, that agent will kill her."

Anna couldn't breathe. Couldn't think. Couldn't even feel shocked. The very idea was…

"You're lying." She said, reflexively.

"So, you refuse. Perhaps," Fabius turned to the glass ball. "A demonstration is in order." He held his hand out over the ball and a burst of green power shot from his palm. It burrowed into the glass and the mist within cleared. At the same time, a beam of light shot out from one side of the ball, projecting the image within.

Elsa pushed through a gaggle of branches when she heard screaming to her left. She turned and saw Hans sink to his knees, grasping his head and clawing through his hair. She ran towards him on instinct as the rest of the company stopped and moved to look at all the commotion. Elsa drew near him and kneeled close to him, not quite sure what she was doing.

"Hans, are you…" Elsa started to say but stopped. Hans had stopped screaming, had suddenly looked up at her. There was a faint glow inside his left eye, and the look on his face was some sort of mix between utter terror and disinterest.

Suddenly, he moved with incredible speed, grabbing Elsa by her shoulders and throwing her against the nearest tree. He drew his sword, that expression still on his face, but the terror somehow more pronounced. His arm seemed liked it moved on its own, thrusting the sword right for her.

Elsa whirled out of the way just the blade passed, sinking into the tree. She felt some of her dress catch and tear on the blade. Through that, she felt Hans quickly yank the sword out of the tree and saw him draw his arm back again.

Kristoff came out of nowhere and shoulder-charged Hans into another tree. His face contorted with fury, Kristoff ran at Hans and started wildly throwing punches. Hans ducked beneath them and checked Kristoff in the stomach, striking with far more strength than he should have had. Elsa released a blast of snow and wind.

"Stop!" Anna yelled as she tried to run forward. The Acolytes on either side of her grabbed her arms and held her back. She could see what was happening. How Elsa had nearly been run through. How whoever Fabius was… directing had just knocked Kristoff flat. How the torrent of wind and snow Elsa was releasing didn't seem to slow the attacker. "Stop, please!"

"You know how to make this stop, princess." Fabius replied. "And it won't stop until you do what you know you have to." He lowered his hand closer to the orb, and the magic pouring from his fingers grew brighter, more powerful.

Hans was, impossibly, moving through the tiny blizzard Elsa was shooting at him. He was almost on her, sword raised, that same look on his face.

Marius came from one side and slammed Hans with his shield. Hans seemed to bend in one direction, then quickly rebounded back and drove his sword-bearing fist into Marius' helmet. Marius tumbled backwards, and Hans moved, reaching for Elsa. He grabbed her arm and pulled her toward him, bringing his sword-hand up in a punch that sent her spinning to the ground. He grabbed her braid and yanked her head around, standing over, looking her right in the face, that undercurrent of horror in his face more pronounced than ever.

He raised his sword to her throat.

"Enough!" Anna screamed. All she could see was Elsa's face, bruised and terrified, a sword held beneath her chin, about to cut her throat. "Enough." Anna said again, her tone far quieter, lacking her usual defiance. "I'll do it. I'll do… anything." She practically choked on the words, tears of anger building in her eyes. "Just… just don't hurt her." She begged, head dropping to look at the floor.

Fabius' smile grew so wide it was a wonder his face didn't split open. He lifted his hand away from the orb, the magic vanishing. He reached into a pouch on his belt and withdrew a teleportation crystal. He crushed it between his fingers and tossed the dust away, a glowing red-and-black portal bursting to existence in the midst of the dust.

Fabius picked the orb up from the pedestal, and directed his smile more closely at Anna.

"As I said, princess. All those like you require is the proper motivation."

The glow in Hans' left eye slowly faded and he suddenly collapsed to one side, hyperventilating, mumbling incoherently. He propped himself up a little, holding his side where Kristoff had shoulder-charged him, reaching for the arm where Maruis had struck him. He took a desperate, gulping breath, and promptly threw up onto the forest floor.

"What in all the Burning Hells was-" Elsa heard Vitalion say before the company's collective attention was grabbed by a burst of red light several yards away.

"General!" A voice yelled. Marius and the rest of the company began to quickly, but surreptitiously, move through the trees.

A member of the Covenant, his face uncovered, stood in a small clearing, his fram slightly blocking two Acolytes.

"I know you're out here, General!" The maskless man called. His white hair swept around him as he turned to gaze at the forest surrounding him. Elsa thought she saw a smile already on his face grow as he took it in. "And I know you're here with the Queen. That you're here for the princess." The man turned around and seemed to be fiddling with something. Elsa's breath caught in her throat and she tried to move, to aim a blast of ice, to run out in the clearing and-

Marius grabbed her arm and pulled her back.

"If you want the princess," The man turned back around and held a pair of strange looking cuffs in the air. He then stepped to one side, raising his arm mockingly. "Here she is."

Elsa raised a hand to her mouth in horror. Anna looked terrible. Not physically. But the last time Elsa had seen a look of such hopelessness and sadness on her sister's face had been… she realized she hadn't before. Not to this depth. Maybe when their parents had died, but Elsa had only listened to her through the door. She'd never seen Anna then. She recalled Anna's expression at the coronation, when she commanded the celebration be ended. But even Anna's sorrow then paled to what she clearly felt now.

The white-haired man shifted something in his hand. A large glass orb. Energy began to glow around it, and Elsa thought she heard Hans groan in pain.

Anna stepped forward, and raised her hands, a misty green energy building over her arms, slowly travelling down to her hands.

"No." Elsa whispered. If they were about to make Anna do what Elsa thought they were-

A wave of energy exploded from Anna's outstretched hands, passing through the forest in front of her. Flowers sprung up in its wake, dark blue flowers and what looked like black, thorn-covered roses. A patch of ground began to glow, and suddenly, a line of roots shot up from the dirt, twirling and intertwining and shifting, forming what looked like a crude hand.

A crude man-shape of roots and wood, glowing with magic energy, clawed its way out of the ground. Across the clearing, several more began to form.

A loud cracking sound startled Elsa, and she shifted her gaze to a tree a few feet away. The tree writhed and shifted, branches twisting into facsimiles of arms and fingers, its trunk splitting apart to form legs that it tore out of the ground. Its trunk warped and cracked, power glowing within holes, forming a simple, brutish face.

The tree-creature looked down at the knights surrounding it. Its expression turned angry, and it opened its mouth and roared. It reached down with its branch-arms and scooped up several knights, smashing them into one another before throwing them into the ground. Other trees around the clearing were coming to life too, and the root-men were now leaping in from the clearing, firing bursts of steaming, burning sap or razor-sharp bolts of wood from their mouths and wrapping their long, powerful hands around swords and arms and necks.

"Fall back!" Marius screamed, hacking at a root-man that tried to ensnare him. Elsa stumbled back and was suddenly gazing up a furious tree-creature. She shot a blast of ice into its face as it roared at her. Getting to her feet, she fired a wide arc of ice behind the fleeing knights and gave Anna one last look, taking in the absolute misery and regret on her sister's face before she turned and ran.

I wasn't quite sure how I was going to do this, but I'm much more pleased with this chapter than the last one. I think, any time I get to focus on emotions or describing magic, I can really get out something good.

That's just my take on it, anyway.

Also, I know I haven't been doing much with anyone besides the sisters lately, but that's kind of the point. This is a Frozen fic. I realized/decided well before I had even written chapter 3 that the characters the story was really about were Anna and Elsa. Marius can lead his knights and kick a lot of butt, Hans can be repentant and maybe re-evaluate his opinion of a certain magically-powered queen, Kristoff can be worried about Anna and do anything to help get her back, and Olaf can be... Olaf. But Anna and Elsa are the linchpins of the entire story. They are the main characters, the ones that matter.